Obama mandates religious organizations to cover the cost of contraception as part of health care reform. Catholics are outraged about this, however they they largely ignore that their policies on the matter have done far more harm than good. The latest publication “Condoms and Catholicism: thou shalt not cover thy neighbor’s goods.”

The fact that a religious idea might or might not have damaging social consequences is not something that the federal government is allowed to act on. In your church you can talk just as crazy as you choose, and, it has that first amendment protection. The issue, in the case of catholics and contraception, is not that they are being mandated to comply with something contrary to their own religious dictates. Churches are exempt from this. The issue is how broadly the catholics are trying to define ‘religious institution’. These hospitals and universities that they are raising such a fuss about are not religious institutions. They are businesses that are owned by religious institutions. How does that idea play out if the church builds a nuclear reactor to supply electricity to poverty-stricken districts like parts of Appalachia and the pope decides that, since god created the earth, only god can destroy it, and to take precautions against the damage a nuclear reactor can cause is the moral equivalent of the sin of Lucifer? Are they exempt from the safety regulations? If the church buys a chain of Burger King franchises, do those Burger Kings get the same tax exempt status that the church has? Nobody has said that the church has to do anything. This health care mandate pertains to businesses, independent of the ownership of those businesses. I’m not really hearing this argument being advanced, but, it certainly needs to be.